Friday, September 30, 2011

Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the early years of the 21st Century - 2000 to 2010

India's diverse economy encompasses traditional village farming, modern agriculture, handicrafts, a wide range of modern industries, and a multitude of services. Services are the major source of economic growth, accounting for more than half of India's output with less than one third of its labor force. Slightly more than half of the work force is in agriculture, leading the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to articulate a rural economic development program that includes creating basic infrastructure to improve the lives of the rural poor and boost economic performance.

The economy has posted an average growth rate of more than 7% in the decade since 1997, reducing poverty by about 10 percentage points.

India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Internal forced labor may constitute India's largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children in debt bondage are forced to work in industries such as brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories. Although no comprehensive study of forced and bonded labor has been carried out, some NGOs estimate this problem affects tens of millions of Indians. Those from India’s most disadvantaged social economic strata are particularly vulnerable to forced or bonded labor and sex trafficking. Women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Children are also subjected to forced labor as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agricultural workers.- U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009[full country report]

CAUTION:The following links have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in India.Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false.No attempt has been made to verify their authenticity or to validate their content.

One wishes the circumstances were the same, but they seldom are. How does one equate a girl lured away from a village in Meghalaya to a brothel in Delhi with the one pushed into beedi-binding by her own parents just so there is enough money to feed all the mouths in the family? Or a boy thrown into the laps of paedophiliac foreign tourists in Goa with one who runs away from starvation and poverty at home, to be picked up and employed by a brick-kiln owner who gives him a paltry daily wage and lunch? Which arm of the State — women and child development, labour, police, or home affairs if there is border-crossing — has failed to do its job in each of these cases, and which is responsible for ensuring that the trafficked person gets a livelihood and a respectable life?

This is why trafficking is such a tricky crime in developing countries with their many areas of darkness. In Haryana, for instance, where it is acceptable to destroy female foetuses and kill baby girls, young women are trafficked from Bengal and the Northeast and forced into marriage to keep the family line going. How does one, in the absence of a complaint from the girl or her family, initiate criminal proceedings against those who claim the girl as their daughter-in-law?

Police on Tuesday rescued a former employee of a Bhubaneswar-based placement agency facing charges of trafficking youths from this region to Malaysia from a frenzied mob in Nikiraia village, 15 km from here. The villagers gave vent to their anger as about four youths from the area reportedly enslaved in Malaysia since their departure three months back.

The mob badly beat up Sunil Das and held him captive in the village. The irate mob pounced on him demanding the refund of money that the Malaysia bound youths had paid to the placement agency, police said.

A Dalit youth from this part of the state had undergone a two-month-long nightmarish ordeal in Malaysia and escaped from the clutches of a well-knit human trafficking racket, bringing to the fore the harrowing plight of a number of unemployed local youths still stranded in Malaysia in their quest for greener pastures.

The Enslavement Of Dalit And Indigenous Communities In India, Nepal And Pakistan Through Debt Bondage[PDF]

UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, February 2001

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 6 September 2011]

SUMMARY - This paper describes the gross and continuing violation of the rights of millions of people in India, Pakistan and Nepal, who are trapped in debt bondage and forced to work to repay loans. Their designation as persons belonging outside the Hindu caste system is a major determining factor of their enslavement. Evidence from all three countries shows that the vast majority (80%-98%) of bonded labourers are from communities designated as “untouchable”, to whom certain occupations are assigned, or from indigenous communities. In the same way that caste status is inherited, so debts are passed on to the succeeding generations.

CHILDLINE reaches out to all children in need of care and protection such as: street children, childlabourers, children who have been abused, child victims of flesh trade, differently-abled children, child addicts, children in conflict with the law, children in institutions, mentally challenged children, HIV/AIDs infected children, children affected by conflict and disaster, child political refugees, children whose families are in crises.

Delhi Govt. Started the toll free 'Youth Phone service’1-800-11-6888

The Government of Delhi running the 'youth' helpline named Yuva Phone line in Delhi. Thecounsellors are available round the clock on toll free no 1800116888.The helpline is specially for students.

Anyone who has lost their child can post a message on this website and a search will be set in motion simultaneously in 40 cities in the country.Launched by Don Bosco National Forum for Youth at Risk in association with UNICEF,www.missingchildsearch.netwill be closely watched and monitored by child welfare organisations in all major cities in the country and a search will be generated immediately. The Don Bosco National Forum for Youth at Risk is a major partner ofChildline India Foundation and extends service to hundreds of children who are victims of war, conflict, natural calamities, sexual exploitation, trafficking and HIV/AIDS. They also take care of street and working children.

The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor

INCIDENCE AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Bonded or forced child labor is a problem and exists in several industries.Recent reports indicate that the practice exists in carpet manufacturing and silk weaving.

India is a source, destination, and transit country for trafficking of children for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and other forms of exploitive labor. Children are reported to be trafficked from India to the Middle East and Western countries such as the United States and Europe; into India from Bangladesh and Nepal; and through the country to Pakistan and the Middle East. Mumbai, Calcutta and New Delhi are major destination cities for young girls trafficked fromNepal and Bangladesh for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Children are also trafficked within India for sexual exploitation and forced or bonded labor. Organized crime and police corruption were common factors that contributed to the overall situation of trafficking in India.An August 2004 study by the government estimated that almost half of the trafficked children interviewed were between the ages of 11 to 14 years.

Human Rights Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, March 8, 2006

TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS – Within the country, women from economically depressed areas often moved to cities seeking greater economic opportunities, and once there they were often forced by traffickers into prostitution. In many cases, family members sold young girls into prostitution. Extreme poverty, combined with the low social status of women, often resulted in parents handing over their children to strangers for what they believed was employment or marriage. In some instances, parents received payments or the promise that their children would send wages back home.

According to the IndianCenter for Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, more than 40 thousand tribal women, mainly from Orissa and Bihar, were forced into economic and sexual exploitation; many came from tribes driven off their land by national park plans. A Haryana-based NGO revealed widespread trafficking of teenaged girls and young boys from poverty-stricken Assam to wealthierHaryana and Punjab for sexual slavery under the pretext of entering into arranged marriages or for forced labor. There was also significant trafficking for real marriages due to decades of large-scale and increasing female feticide.

Boys, often as young as age four were trafficked to the Middle East or the Persian Gulf as jockeys in camel races, and many boys ended up as beggars in Saudi Arabia during Hajj (pilgrimage). The majority of such children worked with the knowledge of their parents, who received $200 (Rs. 9,300) for their child's labor. Many children were kidnapped for forced labor, with kidnappers earning approximately $150 (Rs. seven thousand) per month from the labor of each child. The child's names were usually added to the passport of a Bangladeshi or female citizen who already had a visa for the Gulf. Girls and women were trafficked to the Persian Gulf states to work as domestic workers or for commercial sexual exploitation

Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

[74] The Committee welcomes the ratification of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution; the adoption of a plan of action to combat trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of women and children; the initiative to undertake a study, inter alia, to collect data on the number of children and women who become victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking; and the Pilot Projects to Combat Trafficking of Children for Commercial Sexual Exploitation in Destination and Source Areas, but remains concerned that the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, 1986 does not define trafficking and limits its scope to sexual exploitation. In addition, the Committee expresses its concern at the increasing number of child victims of sexual exploitation, including prostitution and pornography. Concern is also expressed at the insufficient programs for the physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of child victims of such abuse and exploitation.

I felt very scared that evening and I refused to eat anything. I soon noticed that many men were coming in and out of the house and I realized it was a brothel. I began howling and shouting. I said that I wanted to leave. Renu Lama told me that I was ignorant. She said that I did not just come easily and I could not go easily. She said that I had been bought and I would have to work as a prostitute in order to pay them back.

On the fourth day that I was in the brothel, my first client came to me. I refused to have sex with him. He had already paid so he grabbed me and tried to rape me. I fought him off. He had managed to get my clothes off but he was very frustrated because I was resisting him so much. He stormed out and asked for his money back. A couple of the brothel owners (voluntary prostitutes) came in and beat me. When they were done, the same man came back in.

Some of my associates overheard the owners saying that they were also planning to sell me to a brothel in Sarat because I was too much trouble. I decided that I could not wait until the boy returned from Nepal. I had to try again to run away. I asked some of the other girls to run with me, but they were too afraid. We had been told that we would be killed if we tried to run away. But I had determined that I would rather die than stay in the brothel. The other girls pooled their money together and came up with two hundred rupees. In exchange for the 200 rupees, I promised that if I made it out alive, I would get help for them.

The Director General of Assam Police GM Srivastava today stated that neighbouring countries, especially Bangladesh, continue to fuel the growth of human trafficking cases in the Northeast, particularly Assam. “There have been many instances where we have seen that professional human traffickers from Bangladesh after marrying a girl from a remote area in the State elopes back home and after keeping her in the neighbouring country for some time, finally sells her to brothels in metros of India,” said Srivastava, adding that the number of duped girls, who are being duped by this racket of human traffickers, is increasing in the State.

Attributing the rise of human trafficking cases in the region to poverty and the simplicity of the people here, the Assam Police chief stressed on the need for an attitudinal change amongst the people to wipe out the menace from the society.

The plight of immigrant Indian workers who were deceived into virtual slavery has brought attention to the vile practice of human trafficking.Indian workers protest slave-like conditions before the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., June 11.The workers took jobs with Signal International to work on the U.S. Gulf Coast following the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Indian workers were told they would receive "green cards," allowing them permanent legal residence in the United States. Many who left their families behind in search of better wages had been told they would be able to bring their relatives.The promises were all lies. Instead of receiving permanent legal status, the workers—who had paid fees of up to $20,000 to Signal—received 10-month H-2B temporary worker visas.The workers were essentially trapped, and their employers knew it. Their documents were stolen and wages were withheld. For all practical purposes, slavery had returned to Louisiana.

All is not well with children in India's northeast. A study conducted by a Guwahati-based NGO along with the police has revealed that a shocking 20 percent involved in prostitution in the region are aged between 11 and 17 years.

In addition, the report also states that most of the children are victims of acute physical torture. "They are initially raped and flogged almost to death to take up the profession," the report said.Almost half of the child prostitutes were from Assam, followed by Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura,Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, said Sarma. Some of the victims were also sold to brothels in Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad."We have reports that sheikhs from the Middle East are also buying northeastern girls from these brothels. Also, trafficking gangs from Southeast Asian countries are taking a keen interest in the girls because of their Mongoloid features," Sarma said.

CBI goes after foster parents in child racket

K Praveen Kumar, Times News Network (The Times of India) TNN, Chennai, May 14, 2008

The case had originated on the basis of complaints from parents about missing children. One of them, the child of Kathiravel and Nagamani, pavement-dwellers in Pulianthope, had been allegedly kidnapped and sold to a Dutch couple.Similarly, the four-year-old child of Sylvia, a woman fromOtteri, was kidnapped from an auto and sold to a couple in Australia. Another couple from the city had lost their one-and-a-half-year old child, who was traced to the US.

The racket was busted in the city in the first week of May 2005 after the Otteri police received specific information about kidnapping of children in and around Otteri.The police team then started investigations and arrested seven people identified as Varadharajan, Sheikh Dawood, Navjeen,Sabeera, Manoharan, Salima and K.T. Dawood. They subsequently traced the racket to an illegal adoption agency, Malaysian Social Service, which had kidnapped street children and sold them to foreigners after forging certificates. The case was subsequently transferred to the Crime Branch. –htsc

Child trafficking could become rampant in state unless tackled urgently, feels activist

Every year thousands are trafficked across India for a variety of reasons including sexual exploitation, bonded labour, organ transplantation, adoption, coerced marriage etc. Women and children are particularly vulnerable to human trafficking and in Manipur child trafficking appears to be a growing epidemic. Though the number of cases are rising, the state government has failed to take any measures AneeMangsatabam, the chairman of Child Welfare Committee told IFP.

Various NGOs and organisations of the state who are working to prevent human trafficking in the state, have said that due to lack of funds and other reasons they were unable to take any action against the traffickers.

Every year thousands of tea tribe girls are lured by people and taken to different parts of India, to work as slave and in most of the cases they lands up in brothels. Those who are forced into sex work, or who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation as domestic labourers, are particularly at risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and unwanted pregnancy.

The plight of the women from this community has remained unheard and unattended, since ages and they are have no other options but to migrate and to follow the people who lure them and assure them good jobs out side the state. - htcp

Every year thousands of Punjabis fly to foreign lands for employment and better future. But for some, this dream turns sour as they are cheated by travel agents and given false assurances.

It was the last thing her father, Gurdev Singh, expected to hear.He had sold land and took loans to pay Rs eight lakh to a travel agent for her job in London. But she ended up in Ukraine where she was forced into prostitution.

"We ran away and sought help from a lady in Ukraine and narrated my entire story and told her that my travel agent took away my passport and travel documents. With her help, I was able to contact my family," added ManjitKaur.

When Mona was 13 years, her mother died and her father remarried. The stepmother was uncomfortable with Mona and wanted to send her away for some job, where she would be able to look after herself. Along came a ”contractor” who arranged jobs for youngsters as domestic help, etc. He paid a certain sum of money to the stepmother and took Mona to a town far away. He got her a job in a massage parlour as a ‘receptionist’. Even before Mona got to know the work profile, she realized that she had been trapped into sexual exploitation. She had become a sexual slave to the ‘customers’ who frequented the place for full-body massage.

About 100 Indian victims of human trafficking in the US have found support from Overseas Indian Affairs Minister VayalarRavi who has promised all help.The workers, who Wednesday quit working for Signal International at Pascagoula shipyard in Mississippi, met in New Orleans, Louisiana, Saturday to discuss their course of action, said Stephen Boykewich, a media spokesperson for the New Orleans Workers' Centre for Racial Justice that is helping them.The workers were recruited byDewan Consultants of Mumbai, and brought by Signal, a marine construction company, to the USover a year ago and made to live and work in abysmal conditions.

The arrest of "Doctor Kidney" Amit Kumar for running a sizeable racket in live kidneys has highlighted the role that South Asia plays as the hub of an international trade in human organs.A sophisticated but unregulated healthcare industry, a "donor pool" of desperately poor people ready to sell a kidney, and a corrupt monitoring system have combined to create a special brand of "medical tourism" in the region, especially in India and neighboring Pakistan.

Kumar is accused of luring poor laborers to his "hospital" in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon with promises of job offers or large sums of money. Typically, they were promised 300,000 rupees (US$7,500) but paid only 30,000 ($750) after the surgery, police said.He is alleged to have conducted more than 500 transplants over an unspecified period, charging up to $50,000 dollars for each operation. Investigators say his patients came from Britain, the United States, Turkey, Nepal, Dubai, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Saddam said, "Our parents face severe hardships in making both ends meet due to abject poverty.Sagir took advantage of this and one day he came to our house and offered to 'help' the family by ensuring education for us. Gaining our parents' confidence and consent, Sagir brought us toNagpur." He added, "When we arrived in the city, Sagir took us to his zari embroidery unit inFarooqNagar, near Teka Naka. He forced us to work in the embroidery unit. We used to work right from 8 am to 2 am, and he (Sagir) used to pay us a very meagreRs 15 to Rs 20 per week."

Trafficking of poor girls by unscrupulous persons or gangs along the Indo-Nepal border here is common, but local people were shocked to know that a father sold his daughter and a husband sold his young wife for money.

To stop human trafficking in sex trade, a self-regulatory board has been established by the sex workers.The board works as a filter and it checks whether the new girl joining the trade is an adult or a minor. This board also tries to find out if any new girl joining the profession is under any pressure to do so.This has been very successful way to check human trafficking, police raids have also reduced considerably, said SwapnaGayen, who too is a sex worker in Sonagachi for over two decades.

The much-hyped policy against child labour has shown little results. In Shahpur village in Vaishalidistrict in Bihar, children were being used as beasts of burden. But the mindset of people was such that, none of them wanted to help those children. The boys were being used instead of bullocks forploughing the land and the land under question belongs to the minister for rural developmentRaghuvansh Prasad’s brother Raghuraj Singh. Child labour right under the nose of the ministry!

Children under the age of 14 are forced to work in glass, fireworks, and most commonly, carpet-making factories. India has the largest number of uneducated children in the world. We boast of abysmal numbers, with 75 million children suffering from malnutrition and more than a 100 million being uneducated. The SarvaShikshaAbhiyan, the Mid Day meal scheme have not shown the desirous results yet, with 70 per cent dropout rate of children before the 10th standard.

Abandoned at the Gurgaon bus stand on Thursday, a 14-year-old victim of human trafficking is left in the lurch with no one willing to offer her a solution, or a long-term shelter. Neither the local police stations nor NGOs are ready to take care of her.

A resident of Gopalganj in Bihar, the victim was married off to a 45-year-old man (one Pramod) as her father could not repay money he had borrowed, the victim has said. The marriage took place in Bihar on March 10, and she was brought to Rohtak a couple of months ago, the victim said.

Trading flesh, selling souls

Deccan Herald, December 8, 2007

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 6 September 2011]

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), between two to three million people are trafficked annually in and out of India. Most disturbingly, a large number of people, especially girls and women, from states such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa and the north-eastern region, are trafficked to the metros such as Delhi and Mumbai.

People from these states are trafficked to work in brothels, dance bars, pubs, restaurants, friendship clubs, massage parlours and for domestic chores, says Dr P M Nair, a senior police official and co-author of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) study entitled 'Trafficking in Women and Children in India'.

Porous borders with economically poorer Bangladesh and Nepal (from where none need visa to visitIndia) aggravate the problem of cross-border trafficking. Bangladesh remained a source country for women and children for a quite a long time, traffickers target their preys in the poverty stricken rural areas.On the other hand, Nepal is identified as a source country in the region. Fair looking Nepali young women are the primary victims of the trafficking, though new trend emerges with attraction for boys too. Unconfirmed statistics reveal that in average 12,000 Nepali women with minors are trafficked every year for sexual exploitation in outer countries. Most of the trafficked women from Nepal were later found infected with HIV/AIDS and also tuberculosis.

Addressing the conference, the minister Ms Chowdhury also argued that trafficking is by and large a gendered phenomenon. The trafficking in India is primarily for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. There are nearly three million sex workers in India and 40 per cent of them are children or adolescent girls. Statistics reveal that children below the age of 10 years are also found in the brothel of Indian cities like Mumbai and Delhi now a day, the minister disclosed."Many believe that having sex with young and virgin girls would cure them of diseases. It is nonsense," Ms Chowdhuryuttered. She emphasized on reducing the demand for prostitutes, engagement of children in workplaces, use of forced labour and empowering all collaborative efforts of governments, NGOs and other institutions to deal with the situation. - htcp

25 arrested for human trafficking; 200 labourers rescued in Indian state

One wishes the circumstances were the same, but they seldom are. How does one equate a girl lured away from a village in Meghalaya to a brothel in Delhi with the one pushed into beedi-binding by her own parents just so there is enough money to feed all the mouths in the family? Or a boy thrown into the laps of paedophiliac foreign tourists in Goa with one who runs away from starvation and poverty at home, to be picked up and employed by a brick-kiln owner who gives him a paltry daily wage and lunch? Which arm of the State — women and child development, labour, police, or home affairs if there is border-crossing — has failed to do its job in each of these cases, and which is responsible for ensuring that the trafficked person gets a livelihood and a respectable life?

This is why trafficking is such a tricky crime in developing countries with their many areas of darkness. In Haryana, for instance, where it is acceptable to destroy female foetuses and kill baby girls, young women are trafficked from Bengal and the Northeast and forced into marriage to keep the family line going. How does one, in the absence of a complaint from the girl or her family, initiate criminal proceedings against those who claim the girl as their daughter-in-law?

GOALS - Every day in South Asia children and young women are lured or taken from their homes with promises of a job, marriage or a place in the entertainment industry.Instead, they end up in the sex trade or as forced labour.India is the hub of this trade, with organised crime syndicates trafficking women and children both within the country and from across the border in Nepal or Bangladesh.

[page 8]On a tipoff, Patnagarh police, led by DSP (crime) N C Dandsena, rescued the 40 labourerswhen they were being taken to a nearby railway station to work in a brick kiln unit.Police said theSarpanch had given some money to the labourers in advance and forced them to go to Hyderabad. They were to work in the brick kiln for five months.

[page 7]ANTI-TRAFFICKING EFFORTS BEARING FRUITS - Over 650 Indians, including 138 minors, who were victims to human trafficking, were rescued during the first six months of this year, an United Nations agency said here today.

He claimed the average age of girls being trafficked in South Asia was dropping."While in 1980, the average age of trafficked girls was 14 to 16 years, it dropped to 10-14 years in 1994. The figure in 2006 has decreased," he said.

The United Nations report also said, that girls and women from West Bengal and Assam are being increasingly trafficked to Punjab and Haryana, where they are sexually exploited until they bear a male child.

“(There is an) emerging pattern of trafficking in girls from West Bengal and Assam to the more prosperous states of Punjab and Haryana, where the gender gap is most acute…The woman is either abandoned or passed onto another man after the birth of the male child,” the study said.

"Trafficking ... contributes to the spread of HIV by significantly increasing the vulnerability of trafficked persons to infection," said Caitlin Wiesen-Antin, HIV/AIDS regional coordinator, Asia and Pacific, for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)."Both human trafficking and HIV greatly threaten human development and security."

Major human trafficking routes run between Nepal and India and between Thailand and neighbors like Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. Many of the victims are young teenage girls who end up in prostitution."The link between human trafficking and HIV/AIDS has only been identified fairly recently," Wiesen-Antin told the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific.

Police on Tuesday rescued a former employee of a Bhubaneswar-based placement agency facing charges of trafficking youths from this region to Malaysia from a frenzied mob in Nikiraia village, 15 km from here. The villagers gave vent to their anger as about four youths from the area reportedly enslaved in Malaysia since their departure three months back.

The mob badly beat up Sunil Das and held him captive in the village. The irate mob pounced on him demanding the refund of money that the Malaysia bound youths had paid to the placement agency, police said.

A Dalit youth from this part of the state had undergone a two-month-long nightmarish ordeal in Malaysia and escaped from the clutches of a well-knit human trafficking racket, bringing to the fore the harrowing plight of a number of unemployed local youths still stranded in Malaysia in their quest for greener pastures.

Many girls from the region are also taken to Indian cities with promises of jobs, said Shimray, a native of Manipur state.Shimray said many women are taken from their homes after being promised jobs as domestic maids. The educated ones are promised jobs in hotels and city firms, she added. In many cases, those who entrap the women are members of their own families, relatives or people close to them.

In the period, the state recorded 3,718 missing female adults. Among them, 1,837 are still untraceable. During the same period 4,259 girls went missing and only 1,918 were traced, Borahsaid.

Guard Against Human Trafficking

Manu Aiyappa, Times News Network (The Times of India) TNN, Hubli, May 4, 2007

These marriage offers come for a consideration ranging between Rs 5,000 and Rs 1 lakh,which are ascertained on the basis of her beauty. In some situations, poor family members sell children hoping that they will get a good life, job or education. However, most of them end up in a brothel or simply they are forced to have sex with clientele."

Traffickers often use local people (sub-agents) in a community or village to find young women and children, and target families who are poor and vulnerable. "One of the major problems with making arrests is that the victim's family does not complain as it does not want to be used as witnesses against the agents or gangs involved in trafficking," an officer said.

The increase in human trafficking cases in the last couple of years is worrying NGOs and exposes the government’s apathy towards the social evil.Figures say that more than 60 girls from Karnataka, who fell prey to human trafficking, have been rescued from brothels and red light areas in Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi.These rescued girls, in the age-group of 12 to 20 years, are mostly from the northern districts of Bijapur, Bagalkot, Shimoga, Mysore, Mandya and Chamrajnagar.They fall easy prey to the agents who assure them of jobs and attractive earnings, but they land up in brothels.

State unaware of child abuse situation, projecting deflated figues

newindpress, BhubaneswarOrissa, April 12 2007

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 6 September 2011]

The pilgrim town of Puri is a haven for child prostitution and rampant paedophilia. A recent study conducted by the Institute of Socio Economic Development with support from United Nations Development Fund for Women says that Puri is the heart of child trafficking and accounts for over 43 percent of the cases.

But the State Administration and Police make no attempt to move because the holy town also happens to be a tourist hotspot.

But the real cause of concern lies elsewhere. Domestic abuse continues unabated and even in the face of newer and stringent legislation. Having children as domestic helps is a common practice and they are the major victims of abuse.

The sensational incident of child torture by royals of Khariar in 2004 had amply revealed the magnitude of the problem. The Crime Branch of Orissa Police arrested the former royal BP SinghDeo and his wife Pushpalata Singh Deo who allegedly branded their 8-year-old domestic help.

The new and stringent legislation has not been able to rein in the menace. Children are not only afraid of reporting the abuse in fear of retribution, loss of livelihood also deters them to disclose.

How to change the world - The role of the social entreprenuer

NikhilMustaffa, The Daily Mirror, March 15, 2007

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 6 September 2011]

As Childline expanded to new cities, the call-tracking system also emerged as an important source of child protection information. National data showed that the biggest killer of street children was tuberculosis, but regional call patterns revealed a variety of local problems. In Jaipur, for example,childline received reports of abuse in the garment and jewelry industries. In Varanasi, there were reports of children being abducted to work in the sari industry. In Delhi, many calls came from middle-class children. In Nagpur, a transit hub, there were frequent reports of children abandoned in train stations. In Goa, a beach resort, a major problem was the sexual abuse of children by foreign tourists.

Panel Draws Attention to Human Trafficking

The Blue & Gray, GeorgetownUniversity, March 12, 2007

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 6 September 2011]

Thirty families living in a village in the Tiruvallur district of India all have one thing in common: They are now free after spending years in bonded labor at a nearby brick kiln, said Gayatri Patel, who visited the village in 2006.

"The people I met with told me the owner of the brick kiln who had practically enslaved these people had been arrested, but he was only sentenced to one night in prison," Patel recently told a Georgetown audience. "The next morning when he left, he just went back to his brick kiln, rounded up another 100 bonded laborers and put them to work."

Arrest of an activist working for a non-government organisation (NGO) for his alleged involvement in human trafficking of 13 Nepalese women in Maharajganj district on Thursday has put a question mark over the very genuineness of such agencies involved in the eradication of the menace.This worker, arrested along with a policeman, was working for the NGO ManavSewaSansthan.

LURED BY SWEETS - KailashSatyarthi, chairman of the Global March Against Child Labour, saysSouth Asia is a major source, destination and transit area for child trafficking of all forms.“Children are being taken for forced labour and bonded labour," he says.

"Children are being used for child marriages. Child prostitution is of course there, then a lot of children are taken as camel jockeys."Thousands of children work in roadside food stalls

Some children, he says, are kidnapped and sold so their organs can be harvested for transplant operations.

One of the young marchers is a boy of 13 who says he was lured from his village in Bihar by a man with sweets, kidnapped, and taken to Punjab where he was made to work 12 hours a day, every day.

Human trafficking is a $32 bn worldwide business

SujoyDhar, Indo-Asian News Service IANS, West Bengal, February 24, 2007

AfsanaKhatun, a 15-year-old Muslim girl from Kolkata'sKidderpore area, has never met 13-year-oldRakesh who works for 18 hours in a Punjab village like a slave after he was trafficked from his native village in Bihar.But on Sunday, Afsana will march with thousands of others from Kolkata so thatRakesh and other boys and girls of his age who are trafficked every day are not enslaved in a stone quarry or a red light area forever.

'The objective of this march is to build a mass movement against child trafficking and forced labour. There is no regional protocol to prohibit trafficking. We would march to make the government answerable and people aware,' he said.

Three young women aged 18 to 20 years were rescued from being trafficked and four persons arrested in this connection here on Tuesday, police said. The girls belonging to Vijayawada city were lured on the promise of jobs in Hyderabad.

Child Trafficking

Tribune, 8 April 2004

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TRAFFICKING AND CHILD MARRIAGE - Due to a demographic imbalance in Haryana (850 girls/1000 boys), men find it difficult to find a bride. The easy way out has been through a network of touts who help men, young old and widowed men to find wives from West Bengal, Assam and Bihar. An estimated 5000 girls were sold in the Mewat region of Haryana.

Of Serious Concern

Editorial, The Rising Nepal, 2007-1-13

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Incidents of human trafficking are on the rise in the country despite the presence of a number oforganisations, both in the private and government sectors, and the powerful media that makes each incident of human trafficking public. The latest case of human trafficking was revealed in Nepalgunjthe other day when a suspected trafficker was arrested while trying to traffic four boys and five girls across the border. Thanks to Maiti Nepal, an NGO working for the well-being of helpless girls, the police arrested the suspected trafficker. Though there is no official record regarding the number of Nepalese girls trafficked to Indian brothels, thousands of Nepalese girls are said to live lives of untold misery in the Indian brothels.

Four arrested for human trafficking

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CID Crime Branch sleuths on Saturday said they’ve arrested four persons who are involved in trafficking two girls allegedly for the purpose of trafficking.

On interrogation, police found that the girls were brought from outside the state and were being supplied by a couple to a middleman in Goa, who in turn sent girls to prospective customers.

Samir went the to urinal while the announcement was being made but when he returned, both his daughter-in-law and the man, identified as Ramesh, were missing, said police.

During investigations, police found that Ramesh, who stays in UsmanpurPusta, northwest Delhi, had gone to Roorkee in Uttaranchal and followed him. At Roorkee bus stop, Ramesh and oneSandhyaDevi were arrested while they were settling a deal of Rs 20,000 for the victim, police said. Police raided Sandhya's house in Roorkee and rescued a 15-year-old girl, who was kidnapped from Old Delhi Railway Station earlier.

A UN report has described Pakistan as the “one of the key sources of women trafficking” in the world.It said that India had also lately emerged as a key destination and transit point for global trafficking of women and girls.

The court was hearing a petition filed by a non-government organisation "Prerna" which has sought reinvestigation into the case wherein nine girls, who had been rescued from a brothel in 2002, had gone missing.

The court was told that the number of minor girls rescued from brothels during the last three years was shocking. As many as 26 girls were rescued in 2003, twelve in 2004, 31 girls were rescued in 2005 and 27 during the current year, the court was told.

[page 22] Trafficking of Nepalese women and children into India, especially from the western districts, has increased significantly in recent days due to lax security at border checkpoints.

A large number of women and children are being trafficked into India from checkpoints west ofButwal, representatives of several Indian and Nepalese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and security officials stated during an interaction on 'controlling cross-border human trafficking'.

A middle-aged woman allegedly engaged in trafficking of humans was caught at New Delhi railway station on Monday after a woman she had sold to a brothel-owner on G.B. Road here eight years ago identified her. The accused had come to the Capital to sell another young woman from Latur inMaharashtra to flesh traders.

The centre has directed state governments to deal with such crimes in a holistic manner and to evolve an effective and comprehensive strategy encompassing rescue, relief and rehabilitation of victims besides deterrent action against violators.

A total of 8900 cases of trafficking were registered in 2004-2005. 13,300 persons were arrested, 93% of them women and minors. 85% of them were convicted, IPS officer P Nair, currently on deputation to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), quotes these figures to illustrate how the justice system is criminalising victims, but not traffickers.

Village heads across impoverished rural India will be asked to help fight human trafficking by keeping a register of people who leave in search of work.The United Nations Development Project (UNDP) is also asking village chiefs to watch out for traffickers who lure villagers with promises of well-paid jobs but force them into the sex trade.

The study said 72 percent of human trafficking is for commercial sex, 80.26 percent of trafficking of women takes place in Bihar - most of it happening during migration for labour - and 12.36 percent of the total trafficking is due to family traditions.

"Trafficking can be disguised as migration, commercial sex or marriage. But what begins as a voluntary decision often ends up as trafficking as victims find themselves in unfamiliar destinations, subjected to unexpected work," said E Rajarethinam of GCT.

Pointing out that trafficking is deeply related to deprivation, Jill Shirey, a consultant at American Centre for International Labour Solidarity (ACILS) said that people are "forced into accepting unknown jobs due to lack of options."

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The Indian ministry statement said India and the United States have an ongoing dialogue on the trafficking in persons, and the annual report "certainly is not helpful to furthering our dialogue."

Rep. Christopher Smith, a Republican author of the 2000 law that established the annual trafficking reports, said in Washington that the Bush administration went too easy on India by placing it on the watch list instead of among the dozen worst offenders.

Microsoft Corp. India Private Limited, under its Project Jyoti program, has announced a grant of around Rs. 2.2 crore to CAP (Child and Police project), a Hyderabad-based NGO, to provide IT skills training to victims of human trafficking as well as vulnerable communities at risk of trafficking.

The Free Software Foundation of India would like to bring to the attention of the Government and the general public the negative implications of the "investment pledges" made by the Microsoft Chairman, Bill Gates, during his present visit to India.At the outset, it needs to be made very clear that the proposed investments have no motive other than the motive of profit and nobody should be under the illusion that these "investments" are being made for the betterment of society or for the development of India. On the contrary, the type of software developed and sold by Microsoft, proprietary software, -- software which is supplied without its underlying source code and without the freedoms to study, modify and redistribute it -- constrains indigenous development and divides society.

We visited 25 relief camps of internally displaced persons [IDPs] in Kokrajhar in Bodoland Territorial Council, Assam [state]. Nearly 200,000 people are living in these camps without proper food. Traffickers carry out recruitment drives in such relief camps. They make false promises of jobs as domestic help in big cities.

Bangladesh busts human trafficking ring: 34 rescued

Deutsche Presse-Agentur (German Press Agency) DPA, Dhaka, 5 May 2006

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The women and children, some as young as five-years-old, were brought by the traffickers from fourneighbourhood districts with false promises of lucrative jobs in India.

But they are mostly forced into prostitution as they illegally enter India, said Adhikar, a local non-government charity for children from poor families.

Last August, the city police had raided several embroidery units in Rakhial and rescued 84 childlabourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The boys, aged between seven and 17 years, had come to Gujarat in search of employment. Subsequent raids by juvenile remand home officials and cops onjewellery production units revealed that child labourers from West Bengal and Orissa were working in sub-human conditions for some money to send back home.

Historians will look back in puzzlement at the way our 21st century world tolerates the slavery of more than a million children in brothels around the world.

India alone may have half a million children in its brothels, more than any other country in the world. Visit the brothel district in almost any city in India, and you can meet 14-year-old girls who have been kidnapped off the street, or drugged, or offered jobs as maids, and then sold into a world that they often escape only by dying of AIDS.

Indo-Pak girls forced into prostitution

Asian News International ANI, Lahore, February 6, 2006

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In a startling case of organised women trafficking that has come to light, Pakistani and Indian girls aged between 11 and 13 are being smuggled to the Middle East countries for being forced into prostitution there. The girls, who are shown as aged between 20 and 22 on their passports, are brought to these countries on the pretext of getting them attracting jobs.

[24 January 2006] Imagine what you would have done if you'd been in HasinaBibi's sandals. She was a lonely 16-year-old working in a garment factory in Bangladesh when an older employee began mothering her. They grew close, and one day the older woman gave Hasina some cakes to eat. Two days later, Hasina emerged from a drug-induced stupor in India, sold to a brothel in faraway Gujarat. The brothel's owner beat Hasina and threatened to deform her face with acid if she tried to escape. She had to do whatever the customers wanted, with or without condoms.

Caritas India Campaign against Hunger and Disease, 2005

Caritas India, New Delhi, 2005

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THE TRAFFICKED VICTIM IS SUBJECTED TO WORST FORM OF HUMAN RIGHT ABUSES - Mona, (not her real name) a girl from Jharkhand, aged 14 years, had been trafficked to Delhi for domestic work. Her father sold her to an agent for Rupees 18, 000. In Delhi, the agent told her employers that they should pay her salary directly to him, so that he can forward the money to her poor parents. But in reality, no money reached Mona’s parents.

''Young girls are trafficked from Nepal to brothels in Mumbai and Kolkata at an average age of twelve. They are trapped into the vicious cycle of prostitution, debt and slavery. By the time they are in their mid-twenties, they are at the dead end or 'cul-de-sac','' the study noted.

US accuses NGO of 'trafficking'

RemaNagarajan, Hindustan Times, WashingtonDC, September 29, 2005

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US government is getting tough on the issue of trafficking of human beings. Indicating its seriousness on the issue, the US government-funding agency USAID terminated funding to the NGOSampadaGrameenMahilaSanstha (SANGRAM) for reportedly supporting brothel owners and obstructing the rescue of minor girls from red light areas.

Gullible young girls from the northeast are being forced into prostitution in the metropolises after being lured by organized syndicates promising them glamorous careers and lucrative jobs, a rights group has said. "The situation is extremely serious with smart operators flooding the northeast hunting for good looking young girls for modeling assignments or jobs in call centers with good salaries," said HasinaKharbih, chairperson of Impulse NGO Network."But in reality, many of these women were pushed into the notorious world of prostitution."

Slavery is not dead in India. Fuelled by trafficking, it is spreading far and wide. Thousands of Indians, especially women and children, are trafficked everyday to some destination or the other and are forced to lead lives of bondage. They survive in brothels, factories, guesthouses, dance bars, farms and even in the homes of well-off Indians, with no control over their bodies and lives. Women and children are also being trafficked for illegal adoptions, organ transplants, the circus and the entertainment industry.

Police said the rescued girls had been whisked away from various places in Nepal, West Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Some of them had been restrained at the brothels for as long as two years.

TasminaKhatun agreed to elope with MukuMondal, a man she loved, not knowing the nightmare she was inviting.Police yesterday rescued the 15-year-old girl from the Sunderbans when she was about to be taken to Kashmir to be sold off to flesh traders.

The minor girl, Mallika, hailing from a poverty stricken family, was approached by a 'sympathetic-looking' Bangladeshi woman, who offered to take the girl to Mumbai with the promise that the family would see a change in their fortunes. At ApnaGhar, Mallika narrated her woeful tale of being bought in from Bangladesh and being forced into the prostitution trade, to the counselor appointed by the government.

"Anamika" (the nameless) is a documentary on trafficking of women and children from Andhra Pradesh to various parts of the country.It narrates how young girls are deceived, forced or coerced to enter the trade every year.

The face that launched a thousand shares

MalvikaKaul, Indian Express, May 20, 2005

www.indianexpress.com/storyOld.php?storyId=70664

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Thousands of Indians, especially women and children, are trafficked everyday to some destination or the other and are forced to lead lives of slavery. They survive in brothels, factories, guesthouses, dance bars, farms and even in the homes of well-off Indians, with no control over their bodies and lives. Women and children are also being trafficked for illegal adoptions, organ transplants, the circus and the entertainment industry.

Little Hands of Slavery

netGuruIndia

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In the tender age of five or six these children are made to work up to fifteen hours a day in stone quarries, fields, picking rags on city streets or as domestic servants. They do not go to school, and throughout their lifetime they possibly wouldn’t even have the barest skills of literacy.

The most important fact that one has to keep in mind is that labor for these children is not just for a means of living but often a compulsion for mere existence. These children belong to extremely poor families where if they do not earn then the family does not get to eat. At times in our society riddled with cruel obligations, child labor comes to be a natural expectation for his or her cast.

The major factor that contributes to the continuing problem of bonded child labor, is the employers' desire for cheap labor. Fierce competition draws factory owners to the plentiful supply of inexpensive, malleable, easily exploited child laborers.

Sunil Dayalkar alias Sanjay More and wife Kushi alias NishikantBiswas allegedly bought Asha(name changed) from one Sanjay Dutt for Rs 65,000 and then forced her into prostitution.Ashafinally escaped and approached the SSB, who raided the Dayalkar’s house and arrested the couple under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act

NGOs estimate that at least 7,000 girls are trafficked into India from Nepal every year. They mostly end up in brothels in metros, condemned to a life of deprivation and torture. Children who are trafficked end up either in the flesh trade or become child labor.

According to the study, the investigators talked personally to the Nepali women in the brothels ofIndia in course of doing research.Most of them fall prey to the avarice of family members. Local brokers come second in the line of the process of selling them there.

An uncle or a family friend pays the parent something like $30. There is the middleman in a packed city, the border guard who takes a payoff, and the agent who takes the girls across the border to the people who then transport them to Bombay and on to the brothel madam, who buys the girls for $50 to $100.

"The Government of India has shown little progress in addressing anti-trafficking in persons concerns since May... In Mumbai, convictions for trafficking-related offences increased from three in 2003 to 11 thus far in 2004 but remain grossly unrepresentative in a city of over 18 million inhabitants."

The most common form of slavery today is debt bondage or bonded labor. A person enters into debt bondage when his or her labor is demanded as a way to pay back a loan. In India, for example, debts running from $14 to $214 are usually incurred for basic necessities, such as food, medical emergencies, marriage dowries (a long-standing cultural tradition), or funeral expenses. Taking into account the outrageous interest rates, often in excess of 60 percent, and the debtors’ meager wages, these loans are difficult, if not impossible, to repay. Moreover, inaccurate bookkeeping on the part of the moneylender ensures that the debtor never pays off the loan. Individuals are then forced to repay loans by working for the moneylender for the rest of their lives and often pass the same debt on to their children and grandchildren. Human rights groups estimate that there are approximately 20 million bonded laborers throughout the world.

In a bid to combat the menace, the U.S. would like to expand its dialogue with India, including its law enforcement agencies. Talking to The Hindu here, the visiting U.S. Assistant Attorney-General, R. Alexander Acosta, said that India faced a handicap in the fight against such crimes due to the lack of a federal law enforcement agency.

During the past three years, the Vajpayee Government has tried to push the idea. But several States have expressed doubts that it would usurp the rights of their police organisations.

Lauding the shift in India's approach to nab the traffickers, rather than the victims, Mr. Acosta hoped that the trend would continue. The three Ps — prosecution, prevention and protection — played a crucial role in checking trafficking.

Indian press reports said that Indian nationals in Jordan and Kuwait were recruited for jobs in U.S.military camps in Iraq as cooks, butchers, laundry workers and handymen.Some of the Indians charge they signed up through Indian employment companies to work in Kuwait, but ended up in Iraqworking for low pay and were refused permission to leave the country.

Pulling the Rug out from Under Us - A Report on Debt Bondage, Carpet-Marking, and Child Slavery

Swathi Mehta, Tufts University, American Anti-Slavery Group

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Ironically, India, the world’s largest democracy, is also home to more slaves than all the other countries of the world combined.1 With roughly one billion inhabitants, India supports over 15% of the world’s population.2 And with more than half of India’s population living below the income poverty line3, nearly 40% of the population cannot afford a sufficient diet.4 As inadequate government expenditure on education, health, and welfare increases the high vulnerability of much of India’s vast population, exploitation – even enslavement – are everyday realities for many Indians.

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A recent study by International Labor Organization (ILO) showed that around 12000 Nepalese women and children are trafficked every year. They are mostly trafficked across the border to India for the purpose of prostitution.Although Nepal has been suffering from this problem for long, there are still no comprehensive data regarding the actual situation of trafficking.

“An analysis of information from print media, case studies and surveys on trafficked survivors shows the age groups, 11-18 years for girls and 6-12 years for boys to be more vulnerable to trafficking. The percentage of trafficking is the highest among hill ethnic groups, followed by Brahmin, Chhetri and occupational castes. There is a great variation in data relating to the educational level of trafficked persons. Nevertheless various reports show that illiterate persons are more vulnerable than literate persons are,” states the book.

Child Prostitution in Nepal/India

Plan-UK

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Every year, thousands of Nepalese girls, some as young as 11 are sent to or procured for brothels in the big Indian cities, like Bombay or Calcutta.

They are often the daughters of poor farming families, where everyone must help with the family income. Girls have little or no earning potential, and if they are to marry need substantial dowries. So, when the middleman arrives in the village, and promises parents cash in return for taking the girls to work in India, or perhaps in "the circus", and that they will be fed, housed and cared for, the offer is hard to resist.

In reality, many of these girls are taken to work in Indian brothels, where new, young girls are much sought after, and their families may never hear from them again.

Anti Trafficking -Save Our Sisters Movement (SOS)

Robert I. Freidman, "India's Shame" Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to an AIDS Catastrophe," - The Nation, 8 April 1996

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EVERY HOUR, FOUR WOMEN AND GIRLS IN INDIA ENTER PROSTITUTION, THREE OF THEM AGAINST THEIR WILL - 13-year-old Mira of Nepal was offered a job as a domestic worker in Mumbai, India. Instead she arrived at a brothel on Mumbai's Falkland Road, where tens of thousands of young women are displayed in row after row of zoo-like animal cages. Her father had been duped into giving her to a trafficker. When she refused to have sex, she was dragged into a torture chamber in a dark alley used for 'breaking-in' new girls. She was locked in a narrow, windowless room without food or water. On the fourth day, one of the madam's goondas (thug) wrestled her to the floor and banged her head against the concrete until she passed out. When she awoke, she was naked; a "rattan" cane smeared with pureed red chilli peppers shoved into her vagina. Later she was raped by thegoonda. Afterwards, she complied with their demands. The madam told Mira that she had been sold to the brothel for 50,000 rupees (about US$ 1,700), that she had to work until she paid off her debt. Mira was sold to a client who became her pimp.'

TINY HANDS AT WORK - In the glow of apparent prosperity, what went unnoticed for the most part were tiny hands that pulled, twisted and separated the yarn, so the fiber could become strong enough for weaving into cloth -- tiny hands that often bled from cuts and sometimes suffered permanent damage at the unrelenting machines in front of them. They belonged to children as young as 6 or 8, who stood all day on tired feet, laboring away at the twisting machines.

These children worked in the midst of ear-splitting noise all day long, in many cases for up to 14 hours a day. Those were the average working conditions for the children of Magadi. No one in their town had heard of children’s rights, let alone of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Every year, an average of 22,480 women and 44,476 children are reported missing in India. Out of these, every year, an average of 5,452 women and 11,008 children are not traced. A recent report, Action Research on Trafficking in Women and Children in India - 2002-2003 indicates that many of the missing persons are not really missing but are instead trafficked.

Take the story of ParvathiVinayak, a young girl in Maharashtra who was reported missing. She was abused and sexually exploited in a beer bar, according to the report. Even when it was confirmed that PV had been trafficked, the police records still had her name listed in the 'missing' list. Similarly, SuhasiniLakshmi, a Class 9 student in Karnataka, was brought to Mumbai by herneighbour for a job. While her parents complained to the police that she was missing, SL was sold to a brothel-owner in Mumbai and was rescued after 20 days when the brothel was raided by the police. - htcp

BEATEN UP - For 11-year-old Mansoor, life was hellish."I used to work 15 hours a day and earn about 20 rupees (less than $0.5) per week," he said.Mansoor, who is from Muzaffarpur district in Bihar, said he used sleep hungry in a small dingy room on most days after work. He has been working for the past nine months."My parents came into contact with a middleman who had promised good money for working in Delhi," he said.

SOLD THREE TIMES - Narayani, in her 50s, said she had been sold three times during the last three decades by her employers."I was working with my husband and three children in the northern state of Haryana in a factory, and all that we used to get as salary was food," said Narayani.

Combating Trafficking Of Women And Children In South Asia - Regional Synthesis Paper for Bangladesh, India, and Nepal[PDF]

This book was prepared by staff and consultants of the Asian Development Bank, April 2003

FOREWORD - Every year, millions of Asian men, women, and even children, venture to new pastures—from the village to the city and sometimes to another country. They are driven by poverty, social exclusion or civil unrest. Their goal is to survive and earn money for their families. For many—disproportionately women and children—these journeys end tragically, as they fall into the hands of traffickers.

CHILD "CARPET SLAVES" IN INDIA - Kidnapped from their villages when they are as young as five years old, between 200,000 and 300,000 children are held captive in locked rooms and forced to weave on looms for food. In India—as well in other countries—the issue of slavery is exacerbated by a rigid caste system.

The Enslavement Of Dalit And Indigenous Communities In India, Nepal And PakistanThrough Debt Bondage[PDF]

UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, February 2001

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SUMMARY - This paper describes the gross and continuing violation of the rights of millions of people in India, Pakistan and Nepal, who are trapped in debt bondage and forced to work to repay loans. Their designation as persons belonging outside the Hindu caste system is a major determining factor of their enslavement. Evidence from all three countries shows that the vast majority (80%-98%) of bonded labourers are from communities designated as “untouchable”, to whom certain occupations are assigned, or from indigenous communities. In the same way that caste status is inherited, so debts are passed on to the succeeding generations.

The Dark Side of Football - Child and adult labour in India's football industry and the role of FIFA

India Committee of the Netherlands, June 8, 2000

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - The NLI report estimates the average daily earning of an adult male in the sports goods industry to be around Rs.20 (less than half a US dollar) which is about one third of the present minimum wage of Rs.63 a day. Stitchers are normally not aware of the concept of minimum wage and are not organized by any trade union. Any protest or attempt to organize themselves can be easily crushed as they are dependent on the contractors for work.

SUMMARY - With credible estimates ranging from 60 to 115 million, India has the largest number of working children in the world. Whether they are sweating in the heat of stone quarries, working in the fields sixteen hours a day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden away as domestic servants, these children endure miserable and difficult lives. They earn little and are abused much. They struggle to make enough to eat and perhaps to help feed their families as well. They do not go to school; more than half of them will never learn the barest skills of literacy. Many of them have been working since the age of four or five, and by the time they reach adulthood they may be irrevocably sick or deformed-they will certainly be exhausted, old men and women by the age of forty, likely to be dead by fifty.

In a report released today, Human Rights Watch, the New York-based human rights organization, charged that women and girls trafficked from Nepal into India for the purpose of prostitution are kept in conditions tantamount to slavery. Held in debt bondage for years at a time, they are raped and subjected to severe beatings, exposure to AIDS, and arbitrary imprisonment. Both the Indian and Nepali governments are complicit in the abuses suffered by trafficking victims.

Child Labour Persists Around The World: More Than 13 Percent Of Children 10-14 Are Employed